What the world wears.

March 12, 2016

DE/CODE THE USUAL: Peter Schamaun & Freya Dalsjø

Deconstruction. Minimalism. Avant-garde. Take these tired terms and toss ‘em in the Baltic Sea. Copenhagen Fashion Week delivered two collections that reclaimed fashion as alchemy. Freya Dalsjø & Peter Schamaun may appear as design twins at first, but as is the case with twins… they are so completely different! Fall in love with both.

Freya Dalsjø

Peter Schamaun

Freya Dalsjø brings a touch of subtle kid whimsy to the serious task of making clothes for grownups. What if we put children drawings not on fridges and cork boards, but wore them as parenting medals? What if we put belts on socks and called them boots? What if you were pulling on an oversize sweater and stopped halfway? Remarkably, these silliest questions get most assured answers in Dalsjø’s slightly off-beat but decidedly wearable fall-winter 2016 looks. And again, those puff-boots with tiny belts… #WishList

Peter Schamaun prefaced his collection with some fun-tastic gibberish… that actually is one of the most honest and poignant statements on the relationship between a fashion designer and their creation. “I never heard a garment speak -nor to me or each other. Neither did I hear them make a gesture -nor have I seen it. Sure was I neither -what it was about, or what it wanted to say. I concluded that the garment could not speak or did not understand what I was saying. It did not have anything interesting to say. Nor could I after the chat but we all agreed that it is communication.” It’s make-belief, all of it: the sketches, the sequence of stitches and cuts, the form, the function. Conjured out of ether, forced into matter by logic, shaped by mimicry of nature and pre-destined to be a social decoy. This is fashion. Is this fashion? You are what you wear; and in Schamaun’s clothes you are a beautiful mess, a masterpiece in the making, the stuff of life. I want it, all.